1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an analyzer that includes a cleaning system inside the analyzer for cleaning a specimen that is a target to be analyzed, or a member that has been in contact with liquid that is used for an analyzing process.
2. Description of the Related Art
Analyzers, which can analyze many samples, such as blood or urine, simultaneously and can analyze various ingredients at a high speed with a high accuracy, have been used in various testing fields, such as immunological tests, biochemical tests, and blood transfusion tests (see, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 08-105901). The samples, i.e., the targets to be analyzed by such an analyzer, are biological fluid materials, for example, blood or urine of a patient, and results of the analysis are used to determine a diagnosis of the condition and a treatment policy for the patient. Therefore, high reliability of the results of the analysis and a short analyzing time taken to obtain the results are demanded. To meet these demands, a typical analyzer includes a cleaning system inside the analyzer for cleaning a sample that is to be analyzed, or a member that has been in contact with liquid that is used in an analyzing process so as to promptly perform the next analyzing process.
If water stains have accumulated inside a cleaning-water tank and pipes through which cleaning water flows, it is impossible to maintain the accuracy of analysis data; therefore, it is necessary to periodically clean the cleaning-water tank and the pipes through which the cleaning water flows so that the water stains cannot accumulate. In a conventional analyzer, pipes through which a cleanser flows from a cleanser tank are completely separated from the pipes through which the cleaning water flows from the cleaning-water tank so that the cleanser and the cleaning water cannot mix together. Therefore, to clean the inside of the cleaning-water tank and the insides of the pipes through which cleaning water flows, a person in charge of maintenance of the analyzer has to perform a complicated cleaning procedure involving the removal of the cleaning-water tank and the pipes through which cleaning water flows from the complicated pipe structure of the analyzer and manual cleaning of them using a cleanser.